Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile (26 page)

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Authors: Nate Jackson

BOOK: Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile

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Our practice facility is ten miles farther west down the 84, and was hastily constructed ahead of our arrival. In fact, it was still under construction when we arrived. It appears to be of the same blueprint as any nondescript industrial office building, framed on the cheap and ringing with a tinny echo. The facility is to be a multidimensional sports complex with soccer fields, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and football fields, none of which have been completed except for several football fields with freshly laid sod on the far end of the desert complex, about a half mile’s walk from the locker room.

The temperature hovers at about 104 degrees and there is a biblical swarm of mosquitoes that descends on every practice. The smell of bug spray dominates the air. Offensive linemen, firmly rooted in their three-point stances, can be seen frantically trying to scratch the eternal itch on their shin bone just before the ball is snapped. As the days wear on, the size of the swarm grows, alerted by the thirsty desert winds.

Upon returning from practice, it is not uncommon to find a shortage of towels for the showers or a scorpion in your shoe. When returning from meetings and getting ready for practice, it is not uncommon to find the contents of your laundry bag damp and musty. The dryer is perpetually in flux. Yes, life is hard in Casa Grande. No one has it how they want it. Everyone is pissed off. There is an audible hum underneath it all: what the fuck are we doing?

The answer is Football! Football made us all the toasts of our towns. It got us laid. It gave us status. It made us tough, gave us confidence, and this scar right here, and here, and here. Football! The physical talent we were born with pushed us onto the football field. It was a no-brainer, really. Society funnels people into the industries that their talents serve. And this mosquito farm in the middle of the Arizona desert is the runoff. It is the prolonged, agonizing breakup of a lifelong relationship that cannot and will not ever end well.

Two weeks into training camp and my blocking technique is coming back to me. My old friends, Bump and Bruise, are back, too. And the firecracker pop in my helmet! I’d missed them all. They never asked me any questions. They accepted me. And they gave my mental struggle the physical reminder that pain on the outside was easier to bear. Here.
This
is pain. We understood each other. In the hot, dry heat, my teammates and I act out the tactical know-how of Jim Fassel’s offense, sweating bug spray and cracking each other in the face, over and over. One day after the next: all days the same. It’s the routine of football in the lives of football men that quiets the demons within. It’s the routine that keeps them at bay. And it is the end of the routine that we all fear. That’s why we’re here.

On one mid-training-camp morning, the same as the one before and the one after, I wait for my turn to run a pass route during one-on-ones. When I get to the front of the line, I whisper my route to the quarterback and get down in my three-point stance.

—Set, hut!

I jab step with my inside foot and shake my defender on the line of scrimmage, pushing up the field with crisply choreographed steps. At the top of the route, I square up my shoulders, give a slight head nod inside, stick my foot hard in the ground and make a clean break toward the corner. The quarterback drops it over my head perfectly as I pull away from the linebacker who is covering me. Touchdown! That’s how it’s done. Satisfied that my endless pursuit of football perfection has finally been reached, or is finally revealed as unreachable, the hand of fate steadies, lines up the scope, and pulls the trigger. No doubts this time. The sniper hits his mark.

Thwap!
My hamstring explodes as I decelerate. I hop twice on my opposite foot, drop the ball to the grass, sit down next to it, and pop off my helmet. A mosquito hovers at eye level. It’s over now. It’s all over.

Acknowledgments

T
his book was brought to life by the support of many wonderful people. The athlete’s body is coveted. His mind is implored to stay silent. But the athletic mind is an abundant source of artistic revelation. These people encouraged me to tap it:

Mrs. Namba, my teacher in the third, fourth, and fifth grades at Grant Elementary School in San Jose, laid a foundation of compassion and confident expression. Those remain my most important school years—the most lasting and most complete.

At Bret Harte Middle School and Pioneer High School I was a social jock. Academia was a thing to be endured between practices and parties. But those years made a lasting impression on my heart, and everyone involved lives in the spirit of this book—girlfriends, friends, classmates, coaches, teachers, and parents.

The summer before my sophomore year at Cal Poly, a childhood friend committed suicide. In the days that followed, my mother gave me a journal. I asked what I was supposed to do with it. She told me to write, it didn’t matter what—just write. And the words started flowing. Uncapping the pen uncorked my heart.

The next year I transferred to Menlo College and enrolled in a newspaper class, and professor DeAnna DeRosa soon gave me a column in the
Menlo Oak
. There were no parameters on the content or style of my articles. Menlo gave me artistic and athletic freedom that allowed me to flourish.

When the Broncos sent me to NFL Europe, I was asked to keep an online journal for their website. Again, no restrictions on content or style. I wrote for the website for the next three years. I am thankful to Pat Bowlen and the whole Broncos family for allowing my self-expression.

During training camp of 2006, a writer named Stefan Fatsis was given unrestricted access to the team in order to write a book about life in the NFL called
A Few Seconds of Panic.
We fell in together, a writer to a writer—bouncing ideas off one another. In the years that followed, Stefan critiqued and promoted my work, made calls on my behalf, gave me advice, and motivated me to keep writing. He pushed me through the door and into the light.

During two consecutive off-seasons after meeting Stefan, I enrolled in writing classes at Denver University. My professors and classmates encouraged me to believe in the voice in my head and shed my football armor, for which I was not ready, but I thank them for trying.

I owe a special thanks to Tommy Craggs of
Deadspin
and Josh Levin of
Slate,
who, after my NFL career ended, gave me a forum to write about what I knew. Soon I was on a plane to New York to pitch my book idea in meetings arranged by my new agent, Alice Martell. Alice found me by chance, and what a lucky man I am for it. Her compassion and thoughtfulness has made the transition from athlete to writer as smooth as possible, and has given me a big picture perspective that I desperately needed.

That trip earned me a book deal with HarperCollins and an introduction to my editor, David Hirshey, and his associate editor, Barry Harbaugh. We shook hands and became partners. But what started as business has evolved into friendship. This book is a product of that evolution. David and Barry let me find my voice without telling me where to find it: a gift I will keep forever.

After a failed attempt at writing in Denver, I packed up and left for L.A., where I wrote this book in steadfast seclusion. Friends, family, lovers: I turned away from everyone to focus on my work. To all of those people, thank you for your patience and understanding.

Many thanks are also due to the west side establishments that provided me food and coffee and ignored my brooding presence: The Cow’s End, GTA, Abbot’s Habit, Intelligentsia, 212 Pier, 18th St. Coffee House, and every public library in West Los Angeles, including the always entertaining main branch downtown. The library dwellers and Venice street kids provided me endless inspiration to complete this book.

I moved in a daily loop on my beach cruiser from Washington Boulevard in Marina Del Rey through Abbot Kinney in Venice and up Main Street in Santa Monica, back up to Lincoln Boulevard and south toward home, where I checked my mailbox for brainfood from my pen pal, Vanessa. Her steady, vulnerable honesty allowed me to be honest with myself, a gift for which I can never repay her.

At night I went to my second family’s home for food and more counsel. Barrick Prince and Bea Poirier fed me and listened to the daily ramblings of a madman. A few times a week I plugged in a guitar and jammed with Colin Kelly and Ged Bauer. The spirit of the jam lives in this book.

Some days I was elated with a breakthrough. Others I thought I was worthless, doing nothing, hopeless, lazy. Then one day, I looked up and I’d written a book. I took a deep breath and turned back to those I’d turned from, and they were still there for me.

And lastly, thank you to my eternally supportive and loving parents, Ross and Marilyn; to my brother, Tom; and to the rest of my family and friends. From childhood to manhood, the love has been constant, and has shaped my outlook on life. I was a lucky boy. I am a lucky man.

Writing this book was like pulling a huge splinter out of my body. Thank you to everyone who helped me build the tweezers.

About the Author

N
ATE
J
ACKSON
played six seasons in the National Football League as a wide receiver and a tight end. His writing has appeared in
Deadspin
,
Slate
, the
Daily Beast
,
Buzzfeed
, the
Wall Street Journal
, and the
New York Times
. A native of San Jose, California, he now lives in Los Angeles. This is his first book.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Credits

Cover photograph © Andy Cross / Denver Post via Getty Images (player); Todd Taulman

Cover design by Milan Bozic

SLOW GETTING UP.
Copyright © 2013 by Nate Jackson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Random House, Inc., for use of an excerpt from Frederick Exley’s
A Fan’s Notes.

FIRST EDITION

Epub Edition SEPTEMBER 2013 ISBN 9780062108043

Jackson, Nate.

Slow Getting Up : a story of NFL survival from the bottom of the pile / Nate Jackson.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-06-210802-9

1. Jackson, Nate. 2. Football players--United States--Biography. I. Title.

GV939.M29J33 2013

796.332092--dc23

[B]

2013011427